Welcome

Welcome to the Riemann Project’s Non-Quantitative Change report! The report you are about to experience was produced to make clear why LaRouche refers to his economic forecasting methodology as the “LaRouche-Riemann Method.” In doing so, we’ll explore the central feature of economics: our characteristic activity, as a species, is built upon mankind’s willful implementation of creative discoveries which re-define our relationship to the universe around us. To do so, we’ll enter into one crucial aspect of Cantor’s work, and the breakthroughs of Bernhard Riemann on implicit geometry and transcendentals. Throughout, the analogy between our economic development, and the growth of life as a whole over evolutionary time, will be kept in mind.

To allow LaRouche to speak for himself, here is the opening of his 1993 article “On LaRouche’s Discovery:”

The central feature of my original contribution to the Leibniz science of physical economy, is the provision of a method for addressing the causal relationship between, on the one side, individuals’ contributions to axiomatically revolutionary advances in scientific and analogous forms of knowledge, and, on the other side, consequent increases in the potential population-density of corresponding societies. In its application to political economy, my method focuses analysis upon the central role of the following, three-step sequence: first, axiomatically revolutionary forms of scientific and analogous discovery; second, consequent advances in machine-tool and analogous principles; finally, consequent advances in the productive powers of labor.

These discoveries were initially the outgrowth of 1948-1952 objections to the inappropriateness of Norbert Wiener’s application of statistical information theory to describing both the characteristic distinctions of living processes and of communication of ideas. I countered with a contrary, non-statistical definition of negentropy, as that meaning of the term might be derived from the common, physically distinguishing characteristic of an evolutionary biosphere. This non-statistical counter-definition of negentropy was then stated in terms of a successfully self-developing physical economy; the efficient impact of scientific discoveries’ communication within such a negentropic physical-economic process was treated as most typical of the communication of ideas in general.

That was the initial core of my discovery, up to the year 1952. Yet, up to that point, the appropriate mathematical representation of such a form of physical-economic negentropy was still wanted. The third step, taken through an intensive 1952 study of Georg Cantor’s 1897 Beiträge, opened the doors of the transfinite domain upon a fresh insight into relevant features of Bernhard Riemann’s contributions. Thence, the applied form of my definition of physical-economic negentropy acquired the title of “LaRouche-Riemann Method.”

After working through this report, I think you’ll find that Riemann indeed helps to provide an “appropriate mathematical representation” of the anti-entropic nature of human economics. Enjoy!